Cyber Criminals Using Japan Earthquake to Set Malware Traps

Within hours of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan,

cyber-criminals had poisoned search results based on the disaster with

malicious links.

Users searching on “most recent earthquake in Japan” may encounter some malicious links to fake anti-virus software, Trend Micro

researchers said March 11. Malware writers used black-hat search engine

manipulation techniques to push these links to the top of the search results,

according to a post on the company’s Malware

“We immediately monitored for any active attacks as soon as news broke

out, and true enough we saw Web pages inserted with key words related to the

earthquake,” Norman Ingal, a threat response engineer at Trend Micro,

wrote.

The Japan Meteorological Agency said the 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the

strongest in the country’s history, hit the Pacific Ocean

at around 2:46 p.m. local time March 11. The earthquake caused extensive damage

in Sendai, the city on the country’s

northeast coast that is nearest the epicenter, and triggered 20-foot-tall

tsunamis and caused widespread fires all along the Japanese east coast. Other

tsunamis triggered by the quake hit Hawaii

and another is heading for the West Coast of the United

States.